


In the Name of the Mother

by Eavans



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Flashbacks, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Issues, Pregnancy, Suicidal Thoughts, Unplanned Pregnancy, angst like woah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 21:31:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18764632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eavans/pseuds/Eavans
Summary: The one where Jaime dies killing Cersei, and Brienne is left with more than the memory of her first love.





	In the Name of the Mother

**Author's Note:**

> I have awful feelings about episode five. I just can't see Jaime making it out alive, and down that rabbit hole of a thought I had an even worse feeling that having the two have sex was for... ulterior motives. Do I think Brienne will end up pregnant? All I'm saying is that if D&D kill Jaime off, I wouldn't put it past their dumb minds. Also Brienne has gender issues because that's the that on that.  
> ___
> 
> Song sung by Podrick is _Martinmas Time_ , a traditional British folk song performed here by [Anne Briggs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c-3Ywyjby0) and another more upbeat version by [Andy Irvine and Paul Brady](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQGjwK4VYVY). The song _Brave Danny Flint_ is a book thing, so no recordings, alas :(
> 
> (Another song in the same vein of cross-dressing ladies is _[Short Jacket and White Trousers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLFp14uaBU4)_ , which I desperately tried to write in but couldn't seem to fit in. Oh well. Happy reading!)

By the time she finds out, it’s too late.

No sickness. No pains. Just armor that won’t fit. Straps that can’t be pulled tighter. Two thick, red alleys have begun to cut Podrick’s hands from the struggle. Every day his palms get rawer. “Leave,” Brienne hisses. She looks away, waits to hear the door close, takes the armor off herself and sits.

Maybe she really is with a child—the idea is so sickening she may throw up—isn’t that what pregnant women did? She never thought of herself much of a woman. She didn’t even know if she _could_ get pregnant.

She closes her eyes, takes a breath, and looks down. Her tunic in her hands, her body is _different_. Brienne can’t remember the last time she bled. Sometime before the battle.

Sometime before Jaime.

* * *

 Brienne hadn’t bled well for years. Since her father had declared Tarth for Renly Baratheon, actually. War does that to you. The fear, the stress, the lousy food and lousier wine.

As a girl, she’d seen the emaciated peasant women of her father’s land. “And they bleed too?” she’d asked her septa Roelle, her voice soft to the older woman for the first time in weeks. Brienne was humbled at fourteen from its appearance, ashamed and embarrassed but left with no other choice than to learn from her carer. “Not much,” she’d responded. “Not enough food. Whenever you bleed, it’s a reminder of your highborn status, Brienne. A hearty woman to have sons. It’s a gift from the Mother.”

Brienne had palmed the small dagger on her side in anger. She felt like cutting the septa’s mantle off and holding it high, high above her head, cutting her hair until she was bald, letting the dagger kiss her throat until she saw a river of tears on its hilt.

 _Knights don’t do that_ Brienne thought. _Septa Roelle doesn’t deserve that. She’s a kind woman. She loves me._

Brienne got up. “I’m going to train with Ser Goodwin, septa. Thank you for your words.”

Brienne’s mother was long dead. She wondered if she hated being a woman as much as Brienne did. Maybe she got herself pregnant to stop it. She didn’t think so though, but she’d never know, would she?

* * *

The moon tea sits cold in her hands. The mint breath of the pennyroyal is long gone, the sweat of the tansy’s camphor has dissipated. Too long has Brienne labored over it, too long has she let her thoughts stun her hands from moving forward.

Will salt ruin it? Are her tears ruining the maester’s mixture? It’s like the first pinpricks of rain upon her palms, tiny rivers flow off and into the cup. The maester is long asleep. It is only the moon and her, the cold tea and leftover ashes of the dead on her balcony.

Her hand knocks the tea off the table. It falls to the floor and breaks into a thousand needles, the water a silvery shroud in the moonlight.

Brienne abhors herself. Her chest is leaden. 

But in her hand, the dagger is almost weightless.

Brienne holds it like straw in front of her body. So simple, really. She’s strong enough to pierce skin, she’s done it her entire life. She imagines the blade as straw, the thrust into her bunching the metal against her like paper, the feeling of death short of nothing. How easy it’d be.

_In the name of the Father I charge you to be just._

This is not just.

_In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the innocent._

This is certainly not defending the innocent.

Her calloused hands press Widow's Wail flush to her chest. She can feel its cool metal sit against her like a scar. _Too honorable._ Slowly, Brienne removes her shirt. It’s like getting ready for prayers at the Sept as a child, the solemnity and ritual of it all. Except now, naked, she takes the blade again and drags its point down the valley of her chest, riding down until the top of her navel.

Just a prick. Just a red thread. She’s still alive. It’s her body again.

* * *

Brienne hadn’t been able to starve herself like the peasants. Septa Roelle had noticed her cut her fish to sinews, push it across her plate and feed it to a dog. There’d been a fight, and Brienne couldn’t stand them fighting anymore. But the morning Ser Goodwin told her she was losing strength Brienne ate so many bowls of Sister’s stew she threw it half up. That wasn’t a way to treat her body. She had to be strong.

* * *

“Podrick,” Brienne calls. The squire appears before her, his eyes already dewy from the wine. The last breath of light has left the sky bruised, purple and pink blooming in remembrance of the sun.

How many nights had she seen him off with a maid or two? How many children did he have by now? Brienne didn’t want to know. But he was a good man, and if there had been any, he’d have called to them. She knows she wouldn’t have had to make him leave.

“I don’t need to tell you, do I Pod?”

“No, Ser.”

“Good. Come sit with me then.”

He sits beside her, the fire loud and smoking in the air in front of them. “Would you like me to sing, Brienne?” he asks, and she knows this is more than a song. When he used her name like that, alone, it was like a mother coming home from war to see her children again. She was with her septa again, or her father, or—or Jaime. No _Sers_ or _Ladys_ or _of Tarths_. Just Brienne.

She had never known Podrick could sing despite all their years together until that night before the battle against the dead. She loves it, though she wouldn’t admit how much. She loves the two of them alone. It’s been the two of them against the world for years now. It won’t end now, she knows. He’ll stick by her. Her child will have a semblance of a father. The two of them will teach them to be the truest knight of the kingdom.

“Yes Pod, thank you.”

Brienne has known this song since she was a girl.

 

_She's made him cut her fine yellow hair_

_As short as any knight, oh._

_Then she goes and dresses in soldier's clothes_

_And a nice little boy was she, oh._

 

Brienne remembers when she cut off all her hair. Her mouth cracks into a smile before she can stop it. Of course Pod would sing this song.

 

_And when they saw that it was her_

_They tried to overtake her._

_But she's clapped her spurs in her horse's side_

_And galloped home a maiden._

 

Next time, next time.

* * *

As a child, Brienne’s father had kept a singer. It eased the hurt of seeing a new woman on his arm every year, their eyes like jewels, their long hair shining like it had been kissed by the sun, their breasts full as Dornish plums. The songs healed her. Songs of knights strong, and summers long, and maidens fair.

“You won’t be like _Brave Danny Flint_ once I’m through with you _,"_ Ser Goodwin had told her. _Brave Danny Flint._ Was that her lot—a boy until men found her cunt, raped and murdered for nothing else than being a warm hole to fuck? She swung harder at Ser Goodwin after that.

Brienne had said once long ago to Catelyn Stark that _Fighting is better than this waiting. You don't feel so helpless when you fight. You have a sword and a horse, sometimes an axe. When you're armored it's hard for anyone to hurt you._

 _Knights die in battle._ Catelyn had raised her eyebrows, smiling.

But Brienne knew better. _As ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them._

There are already songs about her being sung in the streets. There will be even more after the child was born, she knows it. _They are going to be good ones,_ Brienne decides.

* * *

“I have something to tell you, Ser Brienne.”

She sits across Lord Tyrion. The remaining Lannister looks preternaturally tired, his eyes coral rimmed and puffy. His words scare her.

“My brother died killing our sister.”

“I know.” Brienne almost bites. This is old news. It’s been weeks since she burned Jaime.

“I was the one to help him escape when Cersei imprisoned him. He told me to tell you—you must believe me Brienne—he told me to tell you that he was sorry.”

“What for?” Brienne laughs. It’s as cool and harsh as her eyes, Tyrion decides.

“For leaving you without tell you the truth. You’re too honorable, Ser Brienne. My brother had a plan and he knew that you would try to get yourself involved.”

“And what is this _truth_ , Lord Tyrion? That he was going to kill her, or that—”

Tyrion pities her. He cuts off the silence she’s cornered herself into. “He also told me to tell you that he loved you.”

Those words. They break her open. It’s as if the tree she struck a thousand times with Oathkeeper after she had seen Jaime’s dead body had suddenly split, the trunk splintering into a million shards that pierced her until bloody. Too many nights of sobbing, too many mornings after that had left her body decrepit from the pain. She’s stronger than the woman who begged a one-handed man to stay. She doesn’t need to hear this. She—

“I’m pregnant.” Brienne hasn’t said the words out loud until now. The words trip out her large mouth and into the stale air of the room. Her eyes are heavy; they hit only the floor.

“With my brother’s child?”

“ _Yes_ , your brother’s child.” Her eyes aren’t heavy anymore. They rake Tyrion’s face in a fit of bloody anger.

His mouth is open. He looks dumb and confused, and Brienne is almost happy. Let him stumble with this. Let his years of cunning crumble. There’s a long pause. He nods, and closes his mouth in deep concentration. “You’ll keep it?” Tyrion asks at last very softly, taking a quick swig of wine so as to not have to look up into her eyes and see the inevitable pain.

“This is my fault. I won’t kill the innocent.”

“Ever the honorable, Ser Brienne.” He responds, looking up at her now. “I will remind you that it _was_ half my brother’s fault too—you shouldn’t blame yourself so completely.”

“I’m the one in possession of a womb.”

“Yes, but we both know how these things happen.” Tyrion brings his glass down. “It’s not all about honor, is it Brienne?”

 _Love_ . _He’s talking about love._

“I have to leave, Lord Tyrion. Please excuse me.”

* * *

Brienne thinks she knew love.

How many years had she looked at Jaime with famished eyes, his body a puzzle that left her stomach tighter and tighter than the look before? Every gaze was a bruise of need by the end, his flickering green eyes and golden hair hitting her full on no matter how much she knew this wasn’t the time for this. She didn’t think Jaime would ever want her. How naive she’d been.

It hadn’t begun slow, like she’d believed maidens were deflowered. He had kissed her full on, the energy of their lips leaving her breathless and wanting, their clothes torn away like a traitor burning on the stake. She hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do, only that she needed to be on Jaime, closer, closer until—

She hadn’t known what was coming. How many nights had she spent with men moaning to themselves, their hands and breaths dizzy from their fucking? It was a curiosity of men, she had decided, something she couldn’t afford to understand. But when Jaime had brought himself from the depths of her, taken an odd hold beneath her knee only the sun knew, bringing himself between her thighs—how can she describe it? She had never thought maidens were kissed like that.

She’d never been much of a maiden though.

* * *

Brienne thinks she knew love.

She was bigger than him. Stronger than him. How proud she had felt when she beat him in a sword fight all those years ago on that bridge—it was the same triumph as she pressed his body against the sheets—he unable to free himself from her soft grip as they explored each other night after night. His mouth had curled in a sweet agony, his lips dripping their spit, his eyes hidden behind lids from the excess of their bodies. She had thought she was hurting him at first, his cries so real and agonizing. It was only the little human left in him— _in both of them—_ as his mind tried to understand the pleasure.

Was that love? She doesn’t know.

But then there was the time they had cried when they laid together. It wasn’t from being sad, but from some sort of ecstasy they couldn’t contain. Brienne had wanted it all over again, to see Jaime turn his head onto her again when it was over, like a child, weary breath warming their bodies like a flame as his body outperformed the limits of his head. She remembered the swells of his blonde hair tucked against her as he let his body catch up with up his mind, trying to succumb itself to the depths of Brienne’s warmth beside him. Jaime’s face almost cooed, like a bird or a child, the rounds of his thick cheeks slowly writhing against Brienne’s chest, his hand grasping blindly and softly onto anything of hers that he could. Brienne wanted that delirium back, that inexplicable ardor forcing itself out of her mouth as she keened Jaime’s name over and over and over—the tears that would crowd her senses and spill over like ripe fruit onto both of their clean bodies. It was the murmurs and sighs barely catching their throats and the honied intoxication of fulfillment, the dreamy joy of peace, of languid _love_ she wanted back more than anything _._

Her senses at that moment had been nothing, _nothing_ —but not of the emptiness of his death she felt now—but of _love_ . She had been only a feeling that wanted nothing but to touch Jaime, hold Jaime, _be_ Jaime.

Perhaps she did cry from sadness. It wasn’t Jaime’s body she wanted to cling to, it was the soul. Her soul and Jaime’s soul, to be one, to be at peace for once in their lives—that vain suffering of ultimate loneliness she could never be rid of. They could not be one soul, they were made apart and lived apart and were destined to die apart. It was cruel to find such a love as they once had—to taste salvation in such a corrupted, mortal form.

Brienne thinks of her last parting with him. Her frozen feet outside Winterfell, the moon making their warm bodies ghostly white. Their nights together seem a million summers ago. Brienne would take it all back if he could if she could have made him stay. She should have held him down, used all her strength to push him back inside and knocked him out to stop his leaving. She just wanted that love back.

A body wracked with tears of love, not of the emptiness she feels now.

Was that love?

_Yes, yes it was._

* * *

“Stay in the Keep.”

“I need to return to my father in my Tarth, my Lady.”

Sansa’s back is as straight as a sword. “Stay with me in the Keep, Ser Brienne.”

“My place is at Evenfall. You’re returning to Winterfell shortly with your brother as well, my Lady.” She doesn’t want to stay in King’s Landing. She doesn’t want the eyes on her, dissecting her disgrace without knowing her heart.

“The North can wait a few months. The rule is still unstable and it needs us, does it not?”

Sansa will never have a child, Brienne can see it in her eyes. She’ll never let a man a step near her again. This is a chance for her, maybe more so than Brienne. They both know it.

“I will send a raven to my father, my Lady.”

Brienne can see the shadow of a smile on the young woman’s lips. Her child will have more than one mother.

* * *

Brienne only has the vaguest memory of her mother pregnant. She was too young to understand what was happening. Her mother had been small, she supposes. Brienne was at her knee when she died. She can only remember her place on her warm lap thinning, her bed getting smaller until there was no room for Brienne every year. Pregnant every year until she died. One child to show for it.

The thought makes Brienne ill. Her body is transforming into a moving casket. Why would her child live any longer than her brothers and sisters had?

_Because you’re strong, Brienne._

* * *

The days waste into weeks, and weeks into months. It was easier than in the beginning when men in the Keep tried to make her stop her daily work. She was taller than all of them by inches and stronger than them and better at fighting, and they all knew it. _And did you survive the battle at Winterfell against the dead?_ It didn’t take long for them to leave her alone. She wasn’t going to be a _pregnant woman_ . She’s _Ser Brienne of Tarth_ , or so help the gods.

There’s talk of bastard names and then of legitimacy, or marriage contracts that Brienne know don’t exist. She doesn’t care. Let Sansa and Tyrion care. Her child will be of Tarth, and of herself, and of Jaime too. _Storm_ is a wonderful name, she thinks. _Strong and brave._

Brienne hasn’t worn a dress since Harrenhall. The ones for her are simple—she’s ensured that—night and sky and sapphire blue cottons, dark wools that sleep high above her collar. She sits and waits by the end, waiting to have her body back. It’s not unpleasant when she remembers the child, though. When she allows herself to think of the years ahead with them, the brave and kind and strong person that’ll they’ll become.

She hopes they look like Jaime if it’s a boy. It would take another courage to see a daughter with his face.

* * *

Brienne drags her left palm against the dust of the Keep’s balcony. She drags her dirty hand across her face, letting the remnants of ash caress her cheek. Down she goes, her fingers kissing her lips, encroaching her throat, trailing the scar down her chest.

Brienne holds their baby in her sword hand. She bathes her free hand in more debris, over and over again until it’s black. She touches the baby’s rose nose and cheeks like ripe peaches, in the first fuzz of his golden hair and above the same flickering green eyes that once made her sick with love. It’s like war paint almost, as the two of them are covered in the dust and ashes of a thousand burned bodies. One of them must be Jaime.

“My Lady—”

She ignores the septa in their room. Brienne will wash him. She’ll take care of him. She’ll love him.

There’s no moon tea before her tonight. It is only the real moon and her, the ashes of the dead and their child on her balcony. How long will the ashes be there to hold? How long can she expect to have them for, to kiss the crevices of her body only the moon has seen? When will the wind take him away?

A thousand men hold her in the dust, and it’s a price Brienne doesn’t mind paying. It’s only in the ash Jaime’s with them, after all.


End file.
